The Box in the Attic
by Nicole Harpe
Summary: After a long day at the Project, Al finds Beth and their youngest daughter Allie waiting for him. Allie found a box in the attic and needs an explanation. Short and sentimental.


**The Box in the Attic

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This Quantum Leap™ story utilizes characters that are copyright © by Bellasarius Productions and Universal Studios. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan fiction story is written solely for the entertainment of the readers and is not for profit. All fiction, plots, and original characters are the sole creations of the author.

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**The Box in the Attic**

A loud, heavy breath declared the truth of his very long day. It was over though. As an Admiral, Al Calavicci was used to being in command and that meant being on call every waking and sleeping moment. It was not that late in the evening, only about 8:30, but he was too tired to drive the twenty minutes it took him to get to his home. He hadn't been allowed the privilege of sleep for over 28 hours. Getting to his small apartment on the Project grounds was all he wanted to do. Once there, a shower would soothe his tired body and his bed would take away his chaotic thoughts. The door slid open after he placed his palm on the recognition panel. He questioned why the lights were already on, but that question was answered when he heard voices in the kitchen. Turning the corner, he found two of his most favorite people in the world, his beautiful wife Beth and their youngest daughter. Eight-year-old Allegra had Daddy wrapped around all of her little fingers and he loved it. She was the child considered the Admiral's clone and it wasn't simply the physical resemblance. Allie enjoyed testing limits. He knew something had to be up big time if Beth and Allie were waiting for him. The kid must have done something off the charts this time. The sweet child was crying softly and didn't hear her father until he said, "Is everything okay?"

Allie looked at him, broke from her mother's arms and ran to his side and grabbed hold like she had never done before. He lifted her up and held on tightly. Between trying to shush the tears, he looked at Beth and without saying a thing asked what the hell was going on.

"We needed to see you."

He sat down still holding his crying child. "Apparently. How come?"

"Allie went up into the attic after dinner tonight and found the box." There wasn't any need to explain what box Beth meant. Only one specific container had that name. "She opened it and found some things there that made her pretty upset. I thought it best that she come to see that you're okay." Beth stood up and put her hand on Al's shoulder. "I'm going to leave you two for a little while." Without voicing the words, she mouthed, "Good luck," to her husband and told the pair, "I'm going to visit with Verbena. Just page me."

The door opened and closed and Al was alone with his weeping little girl. First thing he had to do was stem the tears. All of his girls had been sung to sleep with the last song he ever sang to his little sister. It couldn't hurt, so he rocked her and sang, "Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds. You and your arithmetic will probably go far." The expected calming influence backfired and Allie's crying got decidedly more upset. "Baby girl, everything is fine. I'm fine. I'm here and I love you very much."

She took time to look into his eyes just to confirm that indeed he was there. "Daddy, why did they do that to you?"

It was the simplicity of the question that made him smile if just a little. The complexity of the answer was too much for a little girl to hear, but she needed answers. His first thought was to tell her the truth in terms she could understand and his truth was, "I don't know, Allie. I really don't know."

"Were you bad? Were they punishing you?"

She was jumping ahead too fast. He had to know what she'd seen and what she understood of what she'd seen. He started simply. "What did you find in the box, baby?"

Her sleeve scraped across her sniffling little nose. "Lots of stuff."

Yeah, well, there was a lot of stuff in the box, but he needed specificity. He used a daddy's thumb to wipe a tear from her cheek. "Lots of stuff? There really is a lot of stuff in there. What do you remember looking at?"

Curling into his arms again, she whispered, "I found this old shirt that was all torn and yucky. It needs to be washed, but Mama said it's been washed a lot."

The kid started with a souvenir he had a compulsion to keep though he never really understood why. "That was the shirt I wore for eight whole years. Can you imagine how yucky your shirt would be if you wore it every day for eight whole years?"

"Why did you have to wear it every day?"

The dancing wasn't going to get any easier. Time to tell her. She was still a little girl, but very bright and inquisitive. She had to have answers and that began with telling her what happened to him over 30 years earlier. His caring arms kept her close to him as he stood and carried her into the living room. He set her gently on the cushion and sat next to her. His strong arm still enrobed her. "Well, it's a long story and some parts are kind of sad and scary, but you have to remember that everything is super fine now. Can you remember that?" He felt her tiny head nod. "I knew you could." A deep breath recharged his willingness to continue. "Okay, a very long time ago, right after Mama and I got married, there was a terrible war. Do you know what a war is?"

"That's when two countries fight each other."

"Right. Sometimes it can be more than two countries. There was this war in a country called Vietnam. Vietnam had a north part and a south part and the two parts were at war. This other country called China decided to help North Vietnam. That didn't seem fair, so the United States said they would help South Vietnam. I was a pilot back then and the Navy sent me to South Vietnam to help win their war."

"Just you?"

The first real laugh of the night rolled out. "No, honey, hundreds of thousands of Americans went there." His instinct wanted to tell her that too many went and too few came home, but that was his issue, not hers. "My job was to fly my plane over North Vietnam."

"Why?"

Let's see - to kill people? In essence, it was the ultimate truth, but scaring her more had to be avoided. "Because they told me to and I wasn't an Admiral then. I had to obey my orders." She seemed placated with that response and he was grateful. "One day, I was flying my plane and some soldiers on the ground didn't like that I was there. They had great big guns and they shot at my plane and it broke. I ended up in North Vietnam far away from my friends. Some soldiers from North Vietnam found me and they decided to punish me for flying my plane over them."

"Why?"

He hated when the girls got into the "why" mode. Rarely was there a good answer. "That's what people do in a war. They want to keep their land to themselves and don't want strangers on their property." Another big breath as he waited for her to ask more, but she was frightened and just wanted to be not afraid. He had to do that for her. "Anyhow, they took me to a special place where they had other men like me, other strangers."

"Why didn't they send you home?"

"It was a war, baby and bad things happen in wars." Her thumb inched into her mouth. She curled her feet under her and laid her head on his chest. Somehow not being able to see her face was going to make this a little easier. "The special place was a prison."

"Bad people go to prison. Were you bad?"

"Most people go to prison only if they're very, very bad, but sometimes soldiers go to prison because they were on the other country's property like I was. All of us in that prison were there for that reason. It happens all the time in war."

"Did they give you that yucky shirt?"

"Yes, they did. They took my flight suit and gave me that shirt and pair of matching pants. Those great big ugly stripes. I was pretty funny looking when I wore that. Can you imagine daddy wearing those great big ugly striped pajamas?"

Her first giggle flirted with sounding out. "You like funny clothes"

A little squish of a tickle got another giggle. "Not that funny, pumpkin."

He hoped that would be enough. Going on with the story wasn't going to be his idea. If more had to be said, she would be the one making the demands. They sat drawing strength from each other, the quiet uninterrupted for nearly two minutes before she said, "Daddy, there were pictures, too. There were pictures of you in a magazine. You were all tied up and the man had a gun."

That particular piece of memorabilia was Beth's. The Pulitzer Prize winning photo gave her hope that her husband, the name on her MIA bracelet, that he might still be alive. The photo had been published in Life Magazine along with the story of an unsuccessful rescue attempt.

As a father, he was proud of his youngest's ability to read far beyond her years, but even though she skipped two grades already, academic intellect isn't the same as emotional intellect. She could read the words and understand them, but her ability to separate his past from her present wasn't formed completely. "The man with the gun was taking me and two other men from one prison to another."

The story haunted her. She read in the magazine how mean the men with the guns were. They hurt people like her daddy. They even killed them. And he looked so sad in the picture. "He tied up your hands. Did that hurt?"

It hurt like mother-fucking hell. His left wrist was broken, but the ropes were tied as tight as his captors could make them. He doubted Beth would like him to use terms like "mother-fucking" in the presence of their little angel, so he told the truth, but with a bit of a spin. "Yes, it did, but they untied me and then it felt better."

"I saw more pictures, Daddy."

"You did?" He wanted her to tell him what she saw. "What kinds of pictures?"

"There was this big envelope with Balboa written on it. We studied Balboa in school." It took a fraction of a second to put it together. Allie had been studying the Conquistadors. She didn't have a clue that Balboa was a Naval Hospital. His brain tried to recall what was in that envelope and when it hit him, he flinched. The tightening of his body wasn't lost on his little girl. "Daddy, are you okay?"

"Sure, baby." The next big breath he took didn't go so smoothly. It shuddered and chilled his spine. Allie found the pictures, the pictures. "Sweetie, those are from a very long time ago."

"There were papers, too."

"Did you read the papers?"

"I tried to, but the words were too hard."

The Admiral was grateful for that small gift. "Yeah, there are lots of really big words in there."

Her tears started up again, softly and more controlled, but still steady and incredibly despondent. "Daddy, I could read some of them. I could read the word 'torture.'"

Let her tell you what she needs to know. Stop reacting like you just got shot down. "Do you know what that means?"

"I'm not sure. I know it's bad and it hurts a lot and that you're never supposed to do that to any puppy or kitten, ever. Did those soldiers torture you, Daddy?"

Before he had a chance to figure out an answer he blurted, "They tortured me almost every day, for eight years." His next breath was even harder to take in.

Daddy's pain was easy to perceive. Allie's tears found reason to explode again. She jumped onto her father, wailing and wrapping her arms and legs around him. "But you're the best daddy in the world? Why did they do that to you?"

He regretted his confession immediately. "It's what happens in war, baby."

Her need to know he was safe didn't let up. Her grip tightened. "I saw the pictures of you at Balboa." The hospital had taken dozens of photos of his damaged body, pictures of his skeletal frame, the broken bones, the blisters, the discolored skin, the cuts and oozing sores and all in bright color. "Daddy, the pictures are so terrible"

"Honey, I'm all better. I'm just fine now."

She sat back again and took his left hand in hers. Her little fingers ran the scars still evident on his wrists. "Did the torture make these scars?"

"Yes."

Her hand went to his back and through his shirt she gently felt the ridges made by years of being whipped and caned. "These scars, too?"

Single word answers were all he chose to be responsible for. "Yes."

"How did they make the scars?"

There were some things he could not tell her. Hell, so far he hadn't told anyone exactly what they did to him - only that it had been done. "Allie, when that happened to Daddy, it was really a bad time. I don't like to think about it and I don't talk about that to anyone, not even Mommy."

That statement startled the child. "Not even Mommy?"

"Not even Mommy."

That took a bit of time to think through, but a few seconds later she asked with a child's urgency of concern, "Are you sure you don't hurt?"

His vow to never lie to his kids went out the door. She needed the lie and in fact, so did he. "I'm positive." There wasn't any good reason to admit that some of the scars were contracting again and those contractions were hurting and he'd probably need a little out-patient surgery to take care of it. He couldn't tell her that. He hadn't even told Beth yet. A mental note was made that he had to have that conversation soon.

The quiet lasted a long time and Al thought the storm was over, but one more squall flooded in. "Daddy, why did you keep all that stuff? It's so sad."

Eight years of his life were filed into that box; eight years of being missing in action, of wondering if they would let him live, if he could find the stamina to live, whether Beth would be there for him, whether he was already dead and this simply was his hell. The box held eight years of wondering if his last day on earth was that day. It held eight years of a life that had no value to anyone except those who these many years later still held onto that box. It was his eight years and regardless of what happened, he had to have them. He refused to let those eight years be a hole that would never get filled. Those eight years were his and as horrifying as they were, they would stay his. She asked why he kept all that stuff. She didn't need to know. "I'm not sure, baby, but it's just something I have to keep."

"Daddy, you were away for eight years."

"That's right."

With the convoluted logic of a child with no experience to help her understand, she said, "I'm eight years old. Was it my fault?"

He couldn't hold her tighter without hurting her. "Oh, God, no, baby. Your fault? Never in a million and a billion more years. Your eight years have been so perfect. You are the best eight years of my whole life. In fact, I think God gave you to Daddy to make up for me having to be away for so long."

"Do I have to go to prison like you did?"

He always encouraged his girls to follow their own paths and if that was going to be the Navy, well, he wouldn't mind, but Allie's question tore his heart into pieces. "No because you're never going to be in the Navy or the Army or any military. Understand?" The idea that his child would be the position of becoming a POW scared him to a depth he didn't know he had. "You won't go to prison like Daddy. I'll make sure of that."

The other thumb replaced the one that was prune-like and she snuggled onto his lap. "Don't go to jail again, okay"

"I won't. I promise."

"I love you, Daddy."

There are some phrases that simply make you whole. That was one, but he wanted her little heart to be sweet and naïve and eight years old. So he recalled a funny, old song his girls loved, "When the moon hits you eye like a big-a pizza pie, that's amore. When the stars start to shine like-a you had too much-a wine, that's amore." He gave her a little tickle. "Sing with Daddy."

She smiled and rested softly in his arms. "Bells will ring, tinga-linga-ling and you'll sing vita bella."

Another little tickle made her laugh out loud. He asked in that Papa-knows-but-wants-to-see-if-you-know voice, "Now, what does 'vita bella' mean?

"Vita bella means life is beautiful."

In one gigantic gesture, he lifted his baby over his head and sang on, "When the stars make your drool just-a like pasta fazool, that's amore"

She flew her arms out to the wind and giggled, "Daddy, you're silly." Biting her lower lip in deep thought, she commanded, "Messo me giù," so, as per her instruction, his strong arms brought her back to earth. There was one more great big hug she had to give him. Still using her Italian - Daddy liked her talking in Italian - she looked into his eyes and stumbled out, "Ti amo cosi tanto. Non lo lasci."

This little one loved him and he reassured that he would never leave. "Ora sono domestico." He brought her close to him again and whispered, "I'm home now."

**THE END**

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Inchworm © Frank Loesser

That's Amore © Harry Warren and Jack Brooks


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